As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump praised autocrats and exhibited strongman tendencies. But as president of the United States, Trump is proving to be one of the weakest, most disinterested executives in memory. He seems happy — even eager — to be both operationally and ideologically marginalized inside his own administration. This is, I think, the best way to understand the ouster of chief strategist Steve Bannon. White House staff, congressional Republicans, military leaders, and executive branch officials are increasingly confident simply ignoring President Trump. After Trump tweeted that he wanted the military to ban transgender service members from serving,...

Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life. Anybody who ever saw the movie The Manchurian Candidate would have quickly thought it rather odd that every soldier captured in Korea with Raymond Shaw gave identical answers when asked to describe him. However, when associates of Hillary used identical answers to describe her, Ezra Klein of Vox seems not to notice anything strange there. Here is Ezra making the observation about those identical (robotic?) descriptions without the least hint of curiosity as to the Manchurian Candidate quality about them:

After an entire day of getting abused on Social Media by angry Trump supporters and having nearly nobody come to his defense, the Idiot mayor attempted to backtrack a bit. However he could not help but throw in one more jab at Trump which infuriated the majority even more. Here are the top comments on Sam Liccardo’s Facebook page as of right now: snip, read at source

Mark Levin came out firing in response to the disgusting street riots in San Jose last night outside a Donald Trump rally. The protesters were carrying Mexican flags, burning American flags, and assaulting Trump supporters as well as police officers. Levin said, at this point, its not only an attack on the right, or on Trump, but "an attack on America." Levin spent the first 10 minutes of his radio program absolutely eviscerating the rioters: Listen here:

Esquire magazine writer Charles Pierce must be in a state of panic after the events following yesterday's Donald Trump rally in San Jose, California when anti-Trump protesters violently attacked Trump supporters. Last week Pierce wrote that such attacks only help Trump and that has him extremely worried. Unfortunately for him, even some his fellow liberal journalists such as Emmett Rensin, who was today suspended from Vox, still haven't got a clue on just how incredibly counter-productive such riots are.

Many voices are calling for calm in the wake of yesterday's mob violence at a Trump rally in San Jose, California. John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, has come out and condemned the actions of left-wing agitators. The New York Times reports that Pedestal has stated that "Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election." However, not everyone all voices are calling for cooler heads to prevail. Emmett Rensin, an editor at left-wing Vox.com, is one such voice. Rensin has not only failed to condemn the violence, he is explicitly calling for more of it.

“On Thursday night, Emmett Rensin, the deputy editor of Vox’s first person section, sent a series of tweets that, among other things, urged people to riot if Donald Trump comes to their town,” wrote Ezra Klein, Vox’s editor in chief, in a statement posted this afternoon. “We at Vox do not take institutional positions on most questions, and we encourage our writers to debate and disagree. But direct encouragement of riots crosses a line between expressing a contrary opinion and directly encouraging dangerous, illegal activity. We welcome a variety of viewpoints, but we do not condone writing that could put...

Vox deputy editor Emmett Rensin was suspended by the media site Friday for encouraging people to riot at Donald Trump rallies. Vox editor-in-chief Ezra Klein said in a statement that Mr. Rensin’s conduct “violated Vox’s standards and Emmett has been suspended as a consequence.” “We at Vox do not take institutional positions on most questions, and we encourage our writers to debate and disagree,” Mr. Klein said. “But direct encouragement of riots crosses a line between expressing a contrary opinion and directly encouraging dangerous, illegal activity.” Mr. Rensin posted a series of tweets Thursday night encouraging people to riot at...

I spent some time Monday playing around with the excellent tax calculator that Alvin Chang and the Tax Policy Center built. The tool lets you estimate what the tax plans released by Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz would mean for your tax bill — but, more than that, it offers a window into the fundamental ways in which the four candidates are very, very different from one another. Let's take a family making $100,000 — a hefty income, to be sure, but a useful one for illustration. Trump would give you a $6,040 tax cut. Cruz...

On this weekend's Fox News Watch, panelist Jim Pinkerton proposed a simple way to clear up much of the murk surrounding JournoList. Let the Washington Post respond to the 20 questions about the matter that MRC head Brent Bozell has posed to the Post's executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, in an open letter. JournoList was created by lefty blogger Ezra Klein in 2007, who continued to run it after becoming a Post staffer in 2009. Responding to Pinkerton's proposal, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican, a liberal member of the News Watch panel, swung and missed at Bozell . . . View video...

"This, more than his ideology, is why Trump genuinely scares me. There are places where I think his instincts are an improvement on the Republican field. He seems more dovish than neoconservatives like Marco Rubio, and less dismissive of the social safety net than libertarians like Rand Paul. But those candidates are checked by institutions and incentives that hold no sway over Trump; his temperament is so immature, his narcissism so clear, his political base so unique, his reactions so strange, that I honestly have no idea what he would do - or what he wouldn't do."

‘There’s Nothing Random About the Threats Against Jewish Targets:’ US Jewish Leader Chides Obama Over Paris Terror Comments President Barack Obama’s description of the January 9 Islamist terrorist attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris as a “random” assault on “a bunch of folks in a deli” has sparked widespread outrage, with a top American Jewish leader telling The Algemeiner, “President Obama absolutely misspoke…there’s nothing ‘random’ about the threats against Jewish targets.” In wide-ranging interview on foreign policy with Vox magazine editors Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias – “Again and again, they serve him softball—no, make that Nerf ball—questions and...

Executives from several television networks held a conference call on Monday to discuss Donald Trump's campaign treatment of the press, but no immediate action is expected to come from the first call, sources familiar with the call told POLITICO. Another call is scheduled for this afternoon. Representatives from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN discussed how embeds and reporters from outlets are being treated, including being pushed into media "pens." The Washington Post was first to report on the conference call. It's unlikely a formal unified message will be sent to the Trump campaign unless all the networks agree on...

How many times have we heard that Donald Trump has peaked since he declared his candidacy for president in June? A half dozen times? More? And each time Peak Trump was announced by pundits, it was inevitably followed by yet another surge in the polls. This is probably why in recent weeks, media prognosticators seem to have shied from declaring Peak Trump since it is always followed by you-know-what. However enter Ezra Klein of Vox. Throwing caution to the winds, Klein went where few now dare to go by predicting that we have indeed finally reached Peak Trump. Klein consulted charts...

On what planet is it right to punish the innocent in a quixotic effort to curb campus rape?Unfortunately, it’s a-okay in the bizarro world that is Capitol Hill. Democrat Colorado Rep. Jared Polis earned roaring applause on Thursday when the lawmaker declared it is just to expel all students — regardless of guilt — who are accused of sexual assault.“I mean, if there’s 10 people that have been accused and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, seems better to get rid of all 10 people,” Polis said at a House hearing on campus sexual assault....